“Free speech”? Not in higher education.

‘…In 2007, Keith John Sampson, a middle-aged student working his way through Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis as a janitor, was declared guilty of racial harassment. Without granting Sampson a hearing, the university administration — acting as prosecutor, judge and jury — convicted him of “openly reading [a] book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject.”…’ sourceFree speech to the left is as garlic to a vampire…

This is to be expected since modern universities are businesses run by the same sort of spineless managers that can be found in any low-performance corporation.

They are obsessed with “policies and procedures” that give them an illusion of control because the one thing these grey drones do badly is handle non-routine events and ambiguity. Their ideal lecturer is someone who “delivers the prescription”. Their ideal student is a transactional “customer” who pays their money and shuttles through the institution for three years: much like a plastic bottle of Coca-Cola at a bottling plant.

I had to laugh when some years ago, my old university sent me an “alumni appeal”: a crude panhandling beg for money but in a message wrapped up in emotive language about its great traditions and liberal culture and desire to further its teaching and research.

Of course it went straight from my hands into the bin. Transactional remember?

I reckon they really believe that crap about “liberal culture” and “fostering an open-minded academic environment” blahblahblah….
Problem is, Flash, they’ve been living in the lefty bubble for so long now, they mistake the rhetoric for reality–they’re no longer equipped to tell the difference.

I’m afraid this is just the tip of the iceburg, but that one was a particularly nasty one–reading a book! I just blogged on someting similar today about Harvard. In part this is what I posted:

And just in the last few days the university has hit the headlines again. First with their approval of a bondage club, and the second with a flyer sent by one of their single-sex social groups inviting people to their club which included the following statement: ‘Jews need not apply.’ ‘Seriously, no f*****g Jews.’

You will notice, however, there will be no punishment for the above, but if someone said ‘Seriously, no f*****g Muslims,’ there would be an uproar.

What we have is a conformist, docile culture of “You can’t say/read THAT!” and it’s a creeping cancer that will dominate and kill the West. The time for surgical excision to cure is probably past because of complete denial by illiberals that a bad situation even exists.
I’ll keep taking the blood pressure medication, watch this “train crash” unfold and keep wondering why people never seem to learn from history.

‘I believe that politicians, lawyers, busy-bodies and do-gooders are like salamis- greatly improved by hanging for a time.’ Oswald Bastable

"The loss of freedom is like cancer; it will spread slowly but surely across all parts of society until our liberty has been utterly eaten away and we are left with nothing but a half-forgotten idea of what freedom was."